Watching her stepson struggle with two St. Petersburg police officers in what would be his last few conscious moments, Lanette Cruz shouted from a nearby sidewalk.
“Brian, cooperate!”
Moments earlier that August morning, Brian Pepal had stepped out of his Fossil Park apartment and attacked officers Daniel Poveda and Tammy Craig, who had responded to Cruz’s request for a welfare check. Cruz watched as both officers fired Taser probes into Pepal. She heard him scream.
During a scuffle that lasted about two minutes, body camera video shows, the officers got Pepal onto his stomach and handcuffed him behind his back.
Pepal stopped moving. A minute passed, then two. During that time, Poveda and Craig crossed Pepal’s legs and pressed them toward his lower back.
Poveda rolled him onto his side.
“He’s turning purple,” Craig said.
Soon after, the officers were pressing on Pepal’s chest and using a bag to force air into his lungs. He died at a hospital about an hour later.
The Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney’s Office deemed Pepal’s death an “excusable homicide” after the medical examiner determined the way officers restrained Pepal contributed to his death. Pinellas Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, whose office oversaw an investigation of the incident as part of the county Use of Deadly Force Investigative Task Force, said the officers “did everything 100% right.”
But use-of-force experts who reviewed the body camera video at the request of the Tampa Bay Times questioned why the officers kept Pepal handcuffed on his stomach for more than two minutes and pressed his crossed legs up to his back. Those actions, experts said, run counter to what are generally considered law enforcement best practices to avoid asphyxiating a restrained person. And Pepal’s large size increased the potential risk.
Pepal’s loved ones have the same questions as they grapple with the loss of a man who struggled with his mental health but who, until attacking Poveda and Craig, hadn’t acted out violently.
“Of course it was preventable,” Cruz said. “I don’t even think it was excusable.”
‘The calm in those storms’
Raised in Maryland, Brian Pepal was the first of Barbara Bryan’s two sons.
“If there was a sport to be played, Brian wanted to play it,” she told the Times in a written statement. “He loved the excitement of competition, friendship with teammates and simply being outdoors enjoying life.”
Pepal relished his role as older brother, his family said. His sister Sandi Pepal said in a statement that Brian “showed me what it meant to be strong and gentle at the same time.”
“There were storms within our family that, as a little girl, I couldn’t always understand,” she said. “Brian was always the calm in those storms. … He radiated protection, stability, and consistency long before I understood what those words meant.”
Even in hard times, she said, Brian “always spoke to the winner in me, even when I was clearly losing.” When she had her own sons, “Uncle Brian” showed them the same love and respect.
Pepal and his brother, Mark, were in their teens when they moved with their father, Jimmy, and his then-wife, Cruz, to St. Petersburg. After graduating from Northeast High School, Brian spent a couple of years in the U.S. Army, parachuting from planes as part of the 82nd Airborne Division based at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. He did not see active combat. After the service, he worked mainly landscaping and construction jobs.
Pepal was in his late 20s or early 30s when mental health issues surfaced, according to his family. He checked into a hospital after having paranoid thoughts about people following and spying on him. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia, a condition that can lead to hallucinations, delusions and disordered thinking and behavior.
Pepal seemed to manage his condition well for a while, though it wasn’t clear he always took his medication as prescribed, Cruz said. But his mental health declined, his family said, after a devastating on-the-job incident in 2023.
Pepal was working in St. Petersburg for a company that provides traffic data and other services when a driver barreled into him as he picked up traffic cones, Cruz said. Pepal suffered two brain bleeds and nearly lost a leg. After multiple surgeries and months of recovery, he moved in with his father.
Pepal received a settlement and moved into his own apartment, working an office-based job for the same company. He adopted a puppy he named Penny and took her everywhere.
Earlier this year, Pepal verbally threatened a neighbor he’d befriended. It was the first time he’d behaved that way, Cruz said. His family got a court order to have him committed under Florida’s Baker Act. He spent about two weeks in a mental health center.
In March, on his 48th birthday, his employer told him his position was being eliminated. Cruz said the job loss devastated her stepson, and he sank into depression.
Soon after, Pepal was committed a second time after he began screaming at neighbors and chasing cars. He spent several days in a psychiatric ward and reluctantly took medication, Cruz said.
Concerned, his landlord told Pepal he had to move. He found a new apartment nearby, in a duplex at the corner of Fifth Street North and 73rd Avenue.
Cruz still doesn’t understand why a man known as a gentle protector suddenly became prone to making threats. But his family said he never became violent until the day of his death.
An attack, a struggle and then CPR
Shortly after 4 a.m. on Aug. 22, a former neighbor of Pepal’s told Cruz in a text message that Pepal had been knocking on doors, saying he was looking for pedophiles. Cruz didn’t see the text until she woke up. Someone had already called police, but responding officers did not find Pepal.
Later that morning, Mark Pepal visited his brother’s home and found him pacing inside his apartment. His dog had gone missing, and Pepal claimed that St. Petersburg police had shot her. Mark Pepal left and told Cruz what his brother had said. Cruz and Mark Pepal went back to Brian’s house, but he didn’t answer the door, though they could hear him mumbling inside.
A duplex neighbor told Cruz that Pepal had been acting erratically for a few days.
Earlier that morning, the neighbor said, she went out back to smoke, and Pepal called her a vulgar name and told her to go inside, or he would cut off her head. The neighbor said he repeated the threat while walking toward her, so she went inside.
Shortly before 11 a.m., Cruz flagged a passing police sergeant and said her son appeared to be having a mental health crisis. She mentioned the neighbor’s account. The sergeant radioed two officers: Poveda and Craig. When they arrived, Cruz told them that Pepal thought police had shot his dog.
It was 11:08 when Craig and Poveda knocked on the door, according to body camera video released by police. Poveda shouted that it was the police department.
Pepal opened the door and stepped outside.
“Hiiiiii,” Craig said in a friendly voice.
“Where’s the police department?” Pepal asked, his brow furrowed as he took a few steps toward Poveda. “Where’s the police department?”
“We are, we are,” Craig said.
Pepal took a roundhouse swing at Poveda, and the two men fell back into a Toyota parked in the driveway, denting it. As Craig drew her Taser, Pepal charged at her and knocked her to her knees.
Craig fired her Taser as Poveda and Pepal struggled on the concrete driveway. Pepal, on his back, froze, incapacitated by the electric charge. Poveda got up, drew his Taser and fired. Craig and Poveda at that moment appeared to both be tasing Pepal. Craig told him to get on his stomach.
Pepal rolled onto his stomach, then back to his side. Poveda told him to put his hands behind his back.
“Keep popping him!” a panting Poveda shouted at Craig.
“People, help me!” Pepal yelled.
Poveda got his set of handcuffs on Pepal’s left wrist and then struggled to pull his right arm from under his chest as Pepal appeared to resist.
“You just keep popping him!” Poveda told Craig again.
The steady beep of her Taser rang out and Poveda recoiled as he, too, was shocked. Blood seeped from a Taser dart wound in Pepal’s leg. Another dart protruded from his back.
Because of Pepal’s girth, Poveda asked Craig for her handcuffs and attached her set to his.
Craig held the cuffs while Poveda ordered Pepal to release his right arm, then struggled to pull the arm to his back. Pepal could be heard panting and shouted “help” a couple more times. They were the last words he would say at the scene.
Poveda was able to free Pepal’s right arm. Craig picked up her Taser and pulled the trigger again.
At the 3-minute, 11-second mark in Craig’s body camera video, the officers clicked the cuffs around Pepal’s right wrist. At 3:38, Poveda put his knee on Pepal’s back.
About a minute after the officers had secured the cuffs, Pepal shifted slightly under Poveda. His breathing sounded labored. Craig yelled at him not to move. Pepal was face down, Poveda’s knee still on his back.
Craig lifted and crossed Pepal’s legs and pushed them toward his lower back. Poveda grabbed one of his feet.
At that point, Pepal was motionless.
Craig stood up and backed away as Poveda continued to hold Pepal’s legs.
“Sir?” Poveda said at 5:13, then leaned down toward Pepal’s head. “Sir?”
Pepal didn’t respond.
Then, 2 minutes and 9 seconds after they’d secured the cuffs, Poveda began to roll Pepal off his stomach.
Pepal’s head lolled as they rolled him onto his back.
“He’s turning purple,” Craig said, then keyed her radio. “Have rescue step it up.”
Another officer who arrived said to take the cuffs off.
“No, no, no, this guy’s fighting,” Poveda said as he began chest compressions.
“Take the cuffs off,” the other officer said a few more times, more urgently.
Craig removed the cuffs. Poveda continued chest compressions.
Craig jogged to her SUV and grabbed a CPR kit. Paramedics arrived a few minutes later.
“He beat the shit out of us,” Craig said to another officer who’d arrived.
Pepal was pronounced dead at St. Anthony’s Hospital at 12:04 p.m.
‘A reasonable response’
Gualtieri announced the findings of both investigations into Pepal’s death last month.
An autopsy determined Pepal’s death was a homicide caused by traumatic asphyxiation. It listed a number of contributing conditions: Pepal’s obesity and buildup around his coronary arteries, his schizophrenia and the restraint itself.
Gualtieri said the medical examiner’s office determined that a combination of Pepal’s face-down position on the ground, underlying health conditions and pressure applied by Poveda’s knee on his shoulder restricted his breathing.
“There was nothing on his neck, nothing anywhere near his neck,” Gualtieri said. “It was only on his shoulder as he was there trying to keep him on the ground as Pepal was moving about.”
Gualtieri said the officers would have been justified in using deadly force but showed “great restraint” in using less lethal force.
St. Petersburg police can dispatch trained mental health professionals through the agency’s Community Assistance and Life Liaison program. Asked during the news conference why mental health experts did not respond to the wellness check, police Chief Anthony Holloway said it was because Pepal had made threats of violence.
Responding to questions for this story, a spokesperson for the St. Petersburg Police Department said the agency would not comment because its internal review of the incident was ongoing.
Florida law says in part that a homicide is excusable “when committed by accident and misfortune in doing any lawful act by lawful means with usual ordinary caution and without any unlawful intent.” The law also cites situations of “accident and misfortune in the heat of passion, upon any sudden and sufficient provocation, or upon a sudden combat, without any dangerous weapon being used and not done in a cruel or unusual manner.”
Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney Bruce Bartlett cited the statute in a letter to Holloway, writing that the officers didn’t intend to use deadly force and their actions were a “reasonable response to the circumstances presented by Brian Pepal’s own actions.”
Use-of-force experts flagged the moments after Pepal was handcuffed as troubling.
The officers had to meet Pepal’s attack with force, said Marc Brown, a former police officer for the city of Charleston, South Carolina.
“But once he’s handcuffed, the fight stops,“ said Brown, who teaches law at the University of South Carolina. “Now it’s care and custody. You’re responsible for his medical well-being, within reason.”
Brown questioned the decision to leave Pepal on his stomach for so long after he was handcuffed and saw no reason to lift his legs up and press them toward his back. Doing so, Brown said, placed him in a position similar to a restraint method known as hog-tying, in which a person’s cuffed hands are attached to his bound feet behind his back with a nylon belt known as a “hobble.”
Many police departments have followed guidance by the U.S. Department of Justice, released in the 1990s, to ban hog-tying because of the risk of making breathing difficult. An FBI bulletin from 1996 notes that, in that hog-tied position, other factors can increase the risk of sudden death, including obesity and a state of psychosis.
Brown said officers generally are trained to roll a handcuffed person off their stomach as soon as possible. They’re also trained not to lift the legs toward the torso. Better options include placing the person in a seated position, or at least rolling the person onto their side.
Experts said the officers appeared to have Pepal in a position that made it difficult for him to keep fighting.
“The handcuffs behind his back allow you a lot of control and leverage, and then with him on his side and his hips essentially stacked, it’d be tough for him to try to get up and move,” Brown said.
David Klinger, a former police officer and a professor emeritus at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, echoed those concerns.
“I’m scratching my head about that,” Klinger said. “Why is it that they left him in the prone position for about two minutes before they realize that there’s an issue?”
The police department’s policy and procedure manual does not appear to address how long to keep a handcuffed person on their stomach. But a section on transporting detainees alludes to the risk of the hobbled position.
“If a leg restraining device (hobble) is used to minimize resistance, the officer will place the prisoner in an upright position or on their back to avoid breathing complications,” the policy states.
Poveda, a 19-year veteran of the police department, told investigators that Pepal “went from struggling to not breathing pretty quick,” according to a transcript of his interview.
An investigator asked Poveda why they waited to put Pepal in a patrol vehicle to take him to jail. Poveda said he was trying to assess the situation, including why there was so much blood.
“So maybe (it) could have been better if we put him in the car,” Poveda said. “I was just trying to figure out what the whole thing was about and his, um — there was a — like, way too much blood.”
Craig, who has been with the department for 22 years, told investigators that they didn’t want to move Pepal right away because they wanted to give him time to calm down and “maybe talk him down a little bit.”
Both officers were using the Taser 10, a version of the weapon that features 10 individual probe cartridges. Bartlett’s letter states that Craig deployed her “tenth and final” cartridge when Pepal was on his stomach, and Poveda told her to keep shocking him as Poveda tried to handcuff him.
Data pulled from the officers’ Tasers showed Craig pulled the trigger 13 times and delivered 31 seconds of shock. Poveda’s weapon showed two deployed cartridges and just under five seconds of shock.
Klinger said guidance from Axon, the company that manufactures the weapon, advises police to keep shocks to a minimum and to try to avoid more than three cycles of five seconds each, or 15 seconds in total.
The police department’s policy echoes that guidance, stating that once a Taser is energized, the weapon “will not be re-energized again unless there is ongoing resistance,” and it will not be activated “any more than reasonably necessary to gain compliance and safely secure the subject.” Officers must evaluate the person after each five-second cycle.
Cruz said there appeared to be a point when her stepson stopped fighting the officers, but they continued to shock him. She questioned how he could follow directions while being shocked and said there was no reason to keep him on his stomach and hold up his legs.
“He’d already asked for help several times,” she said. “You could hear his raspy, crackly breathing.”
Pepal’s father agreed.
“They didn’t have to use that much force once he was down, in my opinion,” Jimmy Pepal said.
Earlier this month, Jimmy Pepal hosted about 60 people for a celebration of his son’s life. They were stunned by how he died but tried to focus on fond memories.
A few dozen attendees assembled in the front yard under a beating sun for a photo. Two posters sat in the grass in front of them. One had a photo of Pepal sitting in a giant oak tree. The other said this:
“Justice for Brian. Because his life mattered. Loved always. Missed forever.”
